


resigned to fate, fadin' away

by melodiousmadrigals



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: (aka special appearance by one of the Moirai to drive The Plot), Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fix-It, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Steve Is Alive, soothsayers and seers and the Fates oh my!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21528733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodiousmadrigals/pseuds/melodiousmadrigals
Summary: Steve Trevor is eleven years old when he encounters a fortune-teller at the fair whose message haunts him.or: the one where the Fates intervene to bring Steve and Diana back together.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Comments: 11
Kudos: 149





	resigned to fate, fadin' away

**Author's Note:**

> no beta we die valiantly.
> 
> i don't own it, i just ship it. 
> 
> title from lewis capaldi's "hold me while you wait"

Steve Trevor is eleven years old and at the State Fair when someone—not him—makes the decision to stop at the Fortune Teller's booth. Eleven years old is a little young to have strong opinions about Fate, destiny, or the general legitimacy of psychics and fortune tellers, but Steve would probably fall into the "nah, those are just stories, and I'm too old for that" category. 

Predictably, his friends get short, run-of-the-mill fortunes: you will be rich; you will meet someone very important to you very soon; you will discover your passion in the least likely of places. 

But when the fortune teller—an old, hunched women in thick hand-knit clothing, despite the weather—sees Steve for the first time, out of the tent's shadows, her eyes go wide and she clucks her tongue. 

Her hand shoots out, faster than seems possible for one so old, and grasps his arm. "You are an old soul, a tortured soul," she says softly, so that only he can hear. Steve tries to pull away, but the old woman's hold is tight. "You have walked this earth before, and it ended in tragedy, but this life, my dear, will be different, if you can find the one you seek in time. Search for her."

As abruptly as she grabbed him, she lets go and backs away, but Steve is frozen in place. She wasn't making any sense, but before he can think to ask her what she meant, his friends—who seem to have missed the whole exchange, somehow—drag him away to the next attraction. 

* * *

What the woman says haunts him for ages, and when fair time rolls around again, he looks for her booth, covers the whole fairground searching for a woman who just isn't there. For a spell, he thinks maybe he imagined it, but the odor of her incense and the feel of her hand dug into his arm are imprinted as deep in his brain as her words are. 

Eventually, of course, like all things in childhood, it becomes covered by the sands of time, the murky bits of memory buried deep enough that Steve forgets about it. Every year at the fair, the thought may cross his mind, but every year, the woman isn't there, and after a day or two, he forgets again. 

Until, that is, he is twenty-three, more years gone now from the incident than he had when it happened—five years removed from the last time he went to the fair, even—when he wakes, sweaty and shaking, from a dream of dying in a fiery explosion that felt so viscerally _real_ that he has no hope of falling back to sleep. Inexplicably, he thinks of the way the woman clutched at him, told him his last life had ended in tragedy. He shakes himself. That was the stuff of a phony, meant to scare a stupid little boy for a bit of entertainment. 

And yet. 

And yet, the nightmares become worse as months and years pass. He dreams of war, of bombs, of suffering, of dying, and wakes gasping and shaking every time. It starts to invade his daily life. He transfers from field work to an analyst desk job because loud noises startle him, make him dive for cover. (He gets diagnosed with PTSD, even though he _knows_ the month he spent on a mission in Afghanistan didn't cause it.) One day, he even uses his work resources to try to track the woman down and ask her what she _meant_ , because he feels delusional and thinks she'd been about to tell him something else when he was pulled away. (He tries to approach this with a therapist, who thinks he's speaking in an elaborate metaphor.)

He's twenty-nine and trying to sort himself out, trying not to have an identity crisis, trying not to put so much stock in unsettling dreams that feel more and more like memories with every occurrence, when, on his way to get peaches from his favorite stand at the Farmer's Market, he bumps into someone. 

When he turns, he knows immediately that it's _her_. She looks exactly the same, as though it's a piece of his preserved memory come to life. The woman, though old, has not aged a day. She's wearing the _exact_ same chunky hand knit sweater and shawl, and even the wire-work necklace she's wearing is the same. She carries the pungent aroma of incense with her, and it almost feels as if she's brought the tent, too. 

"You," he breathes.

"Me," she agrees, as though it's one of his cheap novels come to life, and not a quiet Arlington side-street on a sticky summer day.

"I've been looking for you for years," he says.

She shakes her head disapprovingly. "I'm not the one you should be looking for, Steve Trevor."

"Tell me what you meant," he pleads. 

"Exactly what I said," she replies. 

"I keep having these dreams. Memories." He knows he sounds desperate, confused. He minds less because he _is_ both of those things.

"Use them to return to her. This is your second chance." 

"I don't even know whom I'm supposed to be looking for!" he snaps in frustration. 

"Stop fighting the memories, Steve Trevor." Before he can stop her (or decide if he wants to stop her) she reaches out with her longest finger and taps the spot just between his eyes. 

The world shifts.

He is in one of his dreams, one that he suddenly knows has slipped away upon awakening, even as he tries in vain to hold onto it. 

There is sand under his back and gentle waves crashing around him, and when he opens his eyes, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen is hovering above him, an elusive smile playing on her lips. 

She opens her mouth, about to say something, and he would give anything to hear her voice, but suddenly he is back on a street in Arlington. 

The woman is nowhere to be seen. 

Steve returns to his apartment, too dazed to remember his peaches. 

* * *

That night, Steve has another dream of the slipping-away variety, but now that he knows her face, it's easier to hold onto even if the rest of the dream isn't. 

The next morning, he wakes up with her face on his brain, a name on his lips (Diana, he's sure of it), and the strange certainty that he needs to be in Paris. The last one baffles him, because he's been there before and liked it alright, but not enough to instill a burning desire to return. 

But he books a ticket, because trying to suppress the things the woman's told him, the things he's seen, hasn't worked, and he's due for a bit of time off anyways. 

* * *

He spends a week wandering around Paris, unsure as to why he's there and whether he'll find something, anything, to indicate he's on the right path. 

But he turns up nothing. He covers lots of ground, strolling through both touristy and residential areas of Paris. The desire to go to the Louvre pops into his head, which is frankly absurd, both because there are better museums and because he's been there before, and the crowds are simply horrendous. Still, he wanders past on his second-to-last day, with the vague intention of going, only to find there's a workers' strike, and the museum is shut down. 

So his feet take him on a meandering path past the Louvre, away from Tuileries. He decides he could use a cup of coffee, and ducks into one of Paris's many quaint cafés. 

He places his order in passable French with an amiable waiter, and scans the café as he waits for his espresso. It is not particularly busy, filled with more Parisians than tourists. A pair of businesswomen sit in the window, another woman sits tucked in a corner, an older gentleman reads a newspaper while sipping his coffee, and a tall woman leans against the counter, chatting softly with the woman manning the espresso bar. 

Moments later, she's passed Steve's espresso off to the waiter. He makes his way towards Steve, and there's a moment where time slows: Steve can see the catastrophe as it's happening. The older gentleman's cane, which was leaning against his seat, dislodges when the man turns the page of his paper and he jars it with his arm. It slips into the path of the waiter at an awkward angle, and the poor man doesn't notice it in time. He trips, and it sends the tray crashing to the ground. 

Everyone in the café turns, but suddenly Steve has tunnel vision, doesn't care that there's probably espresso staining his trousers, because the woman at the counter has turned too, and her face is directly out of his dreams. 

(She is _stunning,_ even more beautiful than he could have possibly thought, but there's a sense of rightness about her that overwhelms his senses. This, this right here is exactly why he had to come to Paris. Even if this moment is all he gets, it will have been worth it, because it's suddenly as though things deep within him are shifting into place.) 

Her glance lasts seconds at most, and then she is moving, but not towards him, only to aid the poor waiter who is muttering apologies to Steve and the woman behind the bar—his boss, based on the interaction.

(It seems so impossible that in a matter of moments his life has been so fully upended and there is no recognition in her face.) 

In the span of the next couple of heartbeats, several things happen at once:

Still staring at her, he stands and manages a choked, " _Diana?_ "

She turns back toward him in mild surprise. 

He kicks himself, realizing he still has on his aviators. 

He pulls them off, offers a half smile. 

She freezes. 

The waiter tries to get Steve's attention, but he doesn't have eyes for anyone but Diana, whose face is the picture of shock. 

A thousand emotions flit across her face, faster than he can keep track of them all. 

" _Steve?_ " she whispers. 

The universe shifts half an inch to the left and time suddenly floods back in at normal speed as she crashes into him, the force of her embrace lifting him off the ground for a moment. 

Her touch has his head spinning, partially because it feels like coming home, and mostly because the inside of his head is instantly full of memories flashing by one right after the next like an old-time film reel, all the ones he couldn't quite hang onto from his dreams. 

(There is war, there is suffering, there is the explosion, but there is also her, _her, her_ ; snowflakes and dancing and watches and ice cream and, and, and.) 

He understands now what _second chance_ meant, understands that _of course_ the reason he came back from whatever afterlife exists was to find her, because she is incandescent, a shining star, and he delights in being in her orbit, falling into her gravity.

Everyone is staring, but he can't find it within himself to care, especially when Diana asks if he will accompany her back to her apartment so that they can talk. He nods his acquiescence, and then her fingers are laced through his, and she's handing the woman at the counter some euros, and she's guiding him back into the afternoon sun. 

As they exit the café, Steve catches a glance of the elderly woman tucked in the corner; she's fiddling with the copper filigree of her necklace, and when their eyes meet, she winks. (When he looks back through the window after crossing the threshold, she's gone.) 

Strange, he thinks. But then he catches Diana's grin, and for now—for the first time in a very long time—he finds himself firmly in the present, and content to be there. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and indulging yet another plot bunny :)


End file.
